Events: Monday, September 23, 2013

A coalition of campus groups at the University of Toronto has organized an alternative orientation week for those with alternative ideas on gender assignment and norms. Disorientation Week presents Gender Revolt!, a week-long series of free talks and group discussions on the “ongoing struggles against capitalism, white supremacy, colonialism, and heteronormativity.” Speakers include Torontoist 2012 hero Steph Guthrie and G20 activist Kelly Rose Pflug-Back; the keynote speaker will be author and activist Sarah Schulman.

Tourism outfit G Adventures hosts the third annual Future of Tourism series, which provides free seminars about world travel. Guest speakers include Les Stroud from Survivorman; Paula Vlamings, executive director of Planeterra; and Bruce Poon Tip, founder of G Adventures and recent author of Looptail: How One Company Changed the World by Reinventing Business.

Robert Altman, Steven Spielberg, and David Lynch will all be under discussion at this week's edition of Media Mondays. Photos courtesy of Film at the J.

Miles Nadal JCC (750 Spadina Avenue)

7 p.m.

For this edition of Media Mondays, three local film critics—Kevin Courrier, Adam Nayman, and Shlomo Schwartzberg—will examine the careers of American directors Robert Altman, David Lynch, and Steven Speilberg. Host David Levine will screen selected clips of the directors’ works for the panel (and audience) to better illustrate their methods and signature styles.

Improv troupe The Dandies presents Clockwork Orange Is The New Black, an improvised mash-up of Netflix’s hit womens’-prison series Orange Is The New Black and Anthony Burgess’s dystopian street-crime novel (and Stanley Kubrick’s film) A Clockwork Orange. Comic Nicole Dunn stars as Alexa Chapman, a new inmate who volunteers for a an experimental treatment program. Over three weekly Monday shows, the audience will help decide how that turns out.

The name “Mesopotamia” derives from a Greek term meaning “land between the rivers.” The Royal Ontario Museum’s latest major exhibit, which opens on June 22, takes this literally, as visitors flow between painted representations of the Tigris and Euphrates rivers on the floor.

Presented by the British Museum and rounded out with pieces from institutions in Chicago, Detroit, and Philadelphia, “Mesopotamia: Inventing Our World” covers 3,000 years of human development in the cradle of urban civilization. Most of the 170 artifacts on display have never been shown in Canada.

Scott Wentworth as Tevye, with Jacquelyn French (Hodel), Keely Hutton (Chava) and Jennifer Stewart (Tzeitel) in Fiddler on the Roof. Photo by Cylla von Tiedemann.

Multiple venues

All day

If Fringe and SummerWorks aren’t enough to satisfy your summer theatre cravings, the world-renowned Stratford Festival is now only a bus ride away from downtown Toronto, thanks to the new Stratford Direct bus route (“the best thing [the Festival] has done in years” according to one usher at the Avon Theatre). Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino has put together a season to please tastes from the traditional to the extravagant. Here’s what we think about five of Stratford’s current productions.

BEARS IN THE STREETS *the world as I’ve seen it is a solo art exhibition by Jeff Blackburn featuring works that involve bears, which act as guides through various cityscapes (see above for example). Visitors will have the chance to see different public spaces from around the world (with bears!). The opening reception will be held on September 1st and will start at 7 p.m.

The planners behind Just For Laughs 42 sure do have a good sense of humour. For starters, the name is a little bit of a joke. Anyone thinking that the “42” refers to the number of years the comedy festival has been in operation would be sorely mistaken—it actually denotes the number of events taking place during the ten days of the festival’s run.

This year’s JFL42 will feature three headline events: appearances by Sarah Silverman and Aziz Ansari, and a live reading of an episode of Family Guy—complete with cast members and a 40-piece orchestra. But there’s plenty more worth checking out. Our overview of this year’s festival is below.

If you look out the window while riding the bus from downtown to Markham, you’ll notice the urban landscape gradually unfolding into the suburban: tight-knit city streets loosen into faster multi-lane roads, box stores assemble in beige-brick clusters, and everywhere new structures are being outstripped by even newer buildings at various stages of completion.

Markham just upgraded itself from town to city in July 2012, and is one of the fastest-growing and most diverse municipalities in the country. And while the place may not inspire many enthusiastic road-trips from downtowners, “Land|Slide Possible Futures,” a new, large-scale public-art exhibition, invites visitors to explore Markham’s history, its quickly changing present, and its potential evolution—while also challenging glib notions surrounding the suburbs themselves.

Bruce Hunter writes and stars in Dine Her, a zombie comedy set in the authentic George Street Diner. This undead spin on dinner theatre features a special menu by Ash Farrelly, music by Sean Fisher, and zombie dancers from One Immigrant Productions.

Many people now routinely consume television series in marathon benders, blowing through DVDs or Netflix downloads in a few evenings or a weekend. It’s that sort of experience—but live, of course—that awaits audiences at Soulpepper’s production of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America, which offers over six hours of impeccably staged and performed theatre either in two long evenings or over the course of one full day, with multiple intermissions and a meal break.